In Past Show

About Linda Fregni Nagler

In her “photography of photography”, Milan-based Linda Fregni Nagler explores ideas of the veracity of images in works that begin with anonymous found photographs from the late 19th and early 20th century. With the added distance of time and culture, the images take on new connotations as she appropriates them or re-photographs them herself. In one series, Nagler recreated images from Japan’s Meiji period by creating detailed tableaux vivants in elaborate, bizarre sets. With subtle shifts, contemporary re-creations are shown alongside the reprinted originals, the images belying their artificiality with painted-on tattoos, two-dimensional props, and rainy scenes where water droplets are cut into the actual photograph or suggested by threads suspended in the studio.